Monday, February 27, 2012

NOT EVEN THE SAME LANGUAGE

I'm sure you've heard and/or seen Rick Santorum's comments about how President Obama wants everyone to go to college (long pause) "What a snob!" He says this with total disgust and dismissal. Then says Obama wants to make all these students like him, and says it with even more disgust.

As others have pointed out, including Jon Stewart in his opening bit tonight. that doesn't even make sense. The very definition of "snob" is one who is elitist, a snob about college would be someone who doesn't want to let others in, doesn't want them to have the opportunity to even go to college.

Even if Obama had said anything like that, it would again be the opposite of snobby, wanting everyone to have the same opportunities he did. But he didn't say that, he said he wanted everyone to have the opportunity to go beyond high school for some kind of further education, even if only for a year at a technical school, exactly what Santorum later, trying to clarify, said he wanted, and he also said he wanted his own kids to get a higher education.

This was the Nixon strategy. He was so resentful at having lost to JFK in 1960, a Harvard graduate, he tapped into the resentments of anti-Irish, anti-Catholic, anti-anything Kennedy and "his kind" could be made to represent, including Ivy League educated Democrats. A strategy the Republicans used ever since, including against Kerry and now Obama. (And managed to convince at least their followers that Harvard educated New England royalty Bush Junior was a Texas "cowboy" or at least "rancher" on a "ranch" that had no cattle, bought just before his run for president and which he pretty much avoids since leaving the presidency.)

The disdain seems obviously to be a cover for envy and insecurity. Envy of people like JFK's and Obama's intellectual fluency, cool charisma, and mastery of our common language. But the Republican propagandists have run over the Democrats over the past several decades, except for Bill Clinton, who with his down home good ol' boy roots couldn't be pigeonholed that way no matter how hard they tried. And they mostly did it with resentment toward those who sound like they actually understand what should be our common language. Where the definition of a snob isn't Obama wanting to include everyone in, that's the opposite of snob, but Santorum and his ilk who want to have a college education for their kids, but the rest of our kids can fend for themselves, and anyone who suggests our kids should have the same education as Santorum's is a snob.

It's more than a bubble these republicans and rightwingers live in, it's an entire other world where the language we are supposed to have in common and they claim to love so much they want it to be the "official"language—English—but then they can't even use it correctly. Except their listeners applaud anyway, because they get the message, which is simply hatred for everything Obama is and stands for.

Man, would I love to write the literacy test that rightwingers would have to pass in order to vote. Wouldn't that be a trip. But unlike their snobby past (and present where they are doing everything to keep minorities and the poor from being able to vote) we of the other persuasion (anything other than rightwing Republicanism) don't believe in voters having to pass tests to have their say in a democracy.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Santorum is running for the nomination in
some foreign country... It sure ain't the
"Melting Pot" we've come to
know and love ?


It's ALL become so ... homogenized ( w Vitamin D
added to fortify) ?

JIm said...

Maybe there should be an ethics test for presidents like Clinton and JFK who diddled with interns.

JIm said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Lally said...

Ever notice how the rightwingers want government out of everything except our personal lives.

Robert G. Zuckerman said...

How about ethics tests for Henry Hide (sic) and Newt G?

tom said...

I missed out on a chance to see Santorum on Sunday - he was in the neighborhood (only 110 miles away)
He came up to eat a pasty and go to mass at the cathedral in Marquette.
I had some questions for him. He probably wouldn't have liked them.
I agree with what you say here about language and lies. The campaign against Obama began when he was elected. The right has laid a ground work of lies for nearly 4 years now and a lot of righwingers believe them to be true. Oh, Rick eating a pasty, just to show the locals what a down to earth guy he is, because all us yoopers eat pasties, eh.
Well, all politicians like photo ops, I guess. My guess is Santorum will get the most votes in Michigan. My county is going overwhelming for him with over 60% of the vote in. (not that we have many voters)

Robert G. Zuckerman said...

It's disgusting, the hypocriscy. So obvious, the lies, the lust for power. Nothing in the content of what Santorum-Romney-Gingrich-Paul etc say shows true regard for the people of this country or for it's standing in the world. It's just about power, and you know damn well that in the unlikely chance one of these power seekers gets elected, all the talk of reform and changing things for the better will go out the window. It'll be a case of "later suckers!".

And by the way, I searched the web and couldn't find one peep from the Repubes about the tragic high school shooting, and God forbid they should lament the ease with which an unstable high school student can get a gun, walk into school and shoot down his teenage classmates.

tom said...

Robert - the NRA's concern with the Second Amendment goes quietly underground when tragedies like this happen. At least until they can begin making excuses that it isn't the easy access of guns that are the problem... you know, guns don't kill, people kill (forgetting that it is a lot easier to kill when you can get a gun. It puts a distance between you and the victim that makes it easier)

Michael - Harry Northrup mentions the blog in a poem this week. You and Silliman.

Robert G. Zuckerman said...

Tom it's not "Guns don't kill people - people kill people" this is another lie. What is truth is: "People with GUNS kill people."

tom said...

I agree - and I may be wrong about Michigan - it is beginning to look like Romney may get a few more votes than Santorum. I don't care for either of them.

Robert G. Zuckerman said...

I'm glad our President was there today, addressing the leagues of now employed workers who, if Romulus has his way would be sh*t out of luck right now.

Lally said...

I agree with you boys, Robert and Tom. And yes, Harry did alert me that he mentioned the blog on his. if you have never read it, I think his book REUNIONS is a classic, one of the great books of my times.

JIm said...

Jim said…
Obama added 5 trillion to the US debt. Hopefully Obamacare will be repealed of ruled unconstitutional.

Walker better raise a lot of money to fight union money. In the last recall election the spent 30million plus.

JIm said...
To equate gay marriage to the civil rights movement that began with the underground railroad and progressed to the civil war, restoration, poll taxes, lynching, segregation, bull horns and attack dogs and church bombings is an abomination. Homesexuals today are celebrated in liveral media and in school curriculia. Christians and people who revere marriage between a man and a woman are reviled by low life politicians and liberals. I is Christians that deserve sympathy,not homosexuals.

February 18, 2012 10:13:00 PM EST



JIm said...
A structured bailout would not have necessitated much if any tax payer money. Bond holders and Unions JIm said...
Obama has reduced America's reliance on foreign oil????? You must be kidding. Obama has lead a vicious attack on the energy industry, only to throw tax payer money down the rat hole of greenie projects like Solyndra.

Gas prices are up signifcantly since Obama was inaugurated. The trend seems to be pointed to $4 plus,